Author Archives: AntoineScroggin

Scott Walker Would Be the Most Conservative GOP Candidate Since Goldwater

Mother Jones

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For those of us who are sort of fascinated by the rise of Scott Walker as a Republican presidential contender, here’s an interesting chart from Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University. It shows the relative conservative-ness of GOP presidential nominees in the past six contested elections, and it demonstrates what an outlier Walker would be if he won next year’s primary: he’d be the first candidate since Ronald Reagan who’s more conservative than the average of the Republican field. And by McDaniel’s measure,1 he’d actually be the most conservative recent nominee, period—even more right-wing than Reagan:

Walker is well to the right end of the conservative spectrum, residing in the ideological neighborhood of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul….It is not a stretch to argue that if nominated, Walker would be the most conservative Republican nominee since Barry Goldwater in 1964.

….In contrast, Jeb Bush’s ideological position closely resembles previous Republican nominees. Bush most closely resembles John McCain in 2008….In Scott Walker versus Jeb Bush, party elites and primary voters are presented with clearly contrasting visions of the future direction of the Republican party….If the recent history of Republican nomination contests is any guide, the party is likely to decide that Scott Walker is too ideologically extreme to be the Republican nominee in 2016.

Of course, the fact that this chart seems surprising is one of Walker’s big strengths. He may be as conservative as, say, Ted Cruz or Rand Paul, but he doesn’t seem as conservative. He doesn’t have Cruz’s bombast and he doesn’t go around hinting that we should go back to the gold standard, like Rand Paul. In practice, that may put him closer to the center of the field than his actual positions warrant.

Still, McDaniel’s data is worth taking note of. If Walker remains hardnosed in his views, it may be hard to hide this from the voters. Eventually he’s going to say something that will cause the Jeb Bushes and Chris Christies to pounce, and that might expose him as too much of an ideologue to win the mainstream Republican vote. It all depends on how well he learns to dog whistle and tap dance at the same time. But then, that’s true of everyone running for president, isn’t it?

1Using data from Adam Bonica, as McDaniel points out via Twitter.

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Scott Walker Would Be the Most Conservative GOP Candidate Since Goldwater

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We’re Bombing Syria, Just Like Obama Said He Would

Mother Jones

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The front page is dominated almost entirely this morning by the news that we’re bombing ISIS militants in Syria. I confess that this doesn’t strike me as worthy of quite such breathless coverage. Two weeks ago President Obama said he was going to bomb Syria, and now he’s doing it. Did anyone expect him not to follow through on this?

But of course I get it. Bombs are headline generators whether they’re expected or not. After reading all the reports, though, Dan Drezner is pessimistic:

I said last week that I’d start making point predictions here. So, here goes: I’m 70 percent certain that there will be no fundamental change in the Islamic State’s hold on territory in Syria and Iraq for the rest of this calendar year.

That’s probably a good bet. This isn’t because aerial campaigns have no value. Of course they do. It’s because in most cases they have limited value unless they’re used in support of ground troops with a well-defined mission. And so far, there’s no well-defined mission and no one is committing ground troops to the fight. Presumably the new Iraqi government will send in troops eventually, and then we’ll see whether our commitment of air resources was worthwhile. Until then we just won’t know.

As an aside, for the next few months I’d treat virtually every announcement from either ISIS or the Pentagon with extreme skepticism. Some of what they say may be true and some may not, but there’s really no way to know which is which. We can parse all this stuff til the cows come home, but that won’t change our fundamental ignorance. Don’t take anything at face value no matter where it comes from.

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We’re Bombing Syria, Just Like Obama Said He Would

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